4 Things Real Estate Agents Wish They’d Learned in English Class, Instead of the Stuff They Normally Teach

People often joke about how we get taught a lot of useless things in school, like the pythagorean theorem or a language they’ll never use, instead of more practical skills like how to do their taxes and write a check. While it’s kind of a joke, learning those basic life skills would certainly come in more handy no matter what profession you end up in later in life!

Well, it doesn’t matter how many jokes or memes are created, there’s no way they’re ever getting rid of the classic courses like math, science, history, and English. But, if they asked for opinions on how to tweak certain subjects to make them more useful later in life, real estate agents would have a few suggestions for English teachers…

Here are 4 things real estate agents would have been better served learning in english class, than how to diagram sentences or memorize a Shakespeare sonnet:

1) How to Write as Short of an Essay as Possible

Who hasn’t cringed when their teacher announced that they need to write a 10-page, single-spaced term paper?! Teachers love assigning essays that require a minimum number of words or pages.

But for real estate agents, it would’ve been more helpful if their teachers told them to make their point in a maximum amount of characters! So many things an agent has to write are limited to a maximum of 150, 300, 500, or 1,500 letters… not words… letters.

Writing the description of a house in the remarks section of their listings on their MLS system, or for ad copy that’ll be displayed online somewhere, painting a picture of the house they’re selling in as few words as possible is a better skill than being able to ramble on for thousands of words.

2) The Art of Abbreviations

Given the limited number of characters agents have to work with, being able to take words like bedroom, bathroom, and fireplace and turn them into two letters that people will recognize and understand is a helpful skill! For example:

“This 4 bedroom home has 3 full bathrooms, and boasts an amazing wood-burning fireplace in the living room.” That’s 98 precious characters being used in just one sentence!

Versus…

“This 4 BR 3 BA home boasts a WB FP in the LR!” A mere 44 characters!

But who knows, maybe an agent could cut it down to like 22 characters if only they were armed with better abbreviation skills in English class.

3) Alternative Words for “Boast”

There isn’t a word agents (or homebuyers) read more on a daily basis than the word “boast.” If only there were other words a listing agent could use…

Sure, you might suggest that an agent could just use an online thesaurus site and sift through the 82 options for the word boast… but obviously many agents don’t.

They need to be taught at an early age that the word boast is overused, and not just given alternative words to consider, but also scared straight from using it. They should try and trick kids into using the word boast and then give them detention just for saying it. Eventually they’ll learn to never utter the word again.

4) Advanced Word Search Skills

Most contracts and addenda that agents read on a daily basis are boilerplate — if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But that’s why agents have to look at them closely!

It’s easy for someone to slip in a sneaky word or term into a doc that tips the scales in their favor, which could hurt their clients’ interests, so they need to scan everything they read both thoroughly, and quickly.

In order to find words that are hidden within the piles of paperwork they handle in their career, it would be phenomenal if at least one semester of school focused on just doing word search puzzles!